...to not want a skip in my front garden?

DH and I live in a flat that's on the ground floor of a block. We have a communal back garden and drying green and then at the front we have a front garden which is private to our flat. It has a high hedge around it (taller than me) which means no one can see into our flat from the road and we've got quite used to having no blinds down during the day, and wandering around semi-clad in the house because we have that privacy. We also use the private bit of the garden quite a bit - we have lawn furniture and a BBQ set and I've been putting up pot plants etc.

A while ago, the two flats on the floor above were gutted in a fire and have had to be completely renovated, which has been a bit of a pain as the builders are pretty noisy during the day - lots of banging, radio v loud etc, but hey ho. We totally accept it's just part of life. Now the builders have come down and asked if they can put a skip in our garden as they are clearing out a load of stuff from the flats. It would be there for an unspecified amount of time (they were vague) and would basically put our garden out of action and mean we'd have builders looking into our living room and bedroom all the time (they face onto the garden).

I said "no" because it's a private garden and nothing to do with the block of flats (it's explicitly ours in the lease), so they are putting it on the street. What is worrying me is that if it's a big skip that's going to be a pain for everyone, with parking, getting past etc.

Am I being unreasonable? Should I suck up losing my garden for most of the summer for the sake of the neighbourhood? DH reckons it's not our problem and comments that the other ground floor garden flat isn't giving up their garden either, but I still feel bad. Apparently they can't use the back garden as it's too difficult to get the skip in there.

Of course you ANBU. It's your garden, not a communal area. The builders/owners of the flats can do what everyone else does in this situation - apply to put the skip in the road. Yes it will take up parking space but it's a bit rich to expect you to have a skip in your private garden. Skips in the road are a common sight in terraced streets with no front gardens. People just manage.

I'm a block manager and I wouldn't dream of asking anyone to put a skip in their demise as it's a bit of an unreasonable thing to ask (especially as there is somewhere else it can be put, albeit slightly inconvenient).

Firstly I have to admit that I read halfway through your post expecting it to be about someone expecting you to increase your fitness levels in public!

But now that I've engaged my brain properly I agree with LouLou that you're definitely NBU. You're being thoughtful about the possibility of parking being made temporarily difficult, but you're not the one who's making it so.

You were completely right to refuse them. Apart from anything else it would ruin your garden, the grass under skip would probably have to be re-seeded and the ground would be full of nails, splinters and shards of glass.

No - they just don't want to pay the permit or comply with the council rules on skips. Plus if it's in your garden they could probably chuck a load of stuff down a chute really easily making tons of dust

Thank you for this absolutely unanimous yes! I clearly am way too prone to guilt and a sense of community. I've been worrying the neighbours will be annoyed with me for causing the road to be blocked up, but everyone seems to think I'm being totally reasonable, so I shall go and add some more flowers to my garden with no pangs of conscience.

I may skip in the garden too! It means I'm closer to the shower when I'm done exercising (after my very sweaty jogging session today that's probably something I can do for the neighbourhood)